The new Clies just announced this week in Japan have now also been announced in Hong Kong. The Sony Style HK site has full details and information about the TH55, TJ37 and TJ27 Clie handhelds in English.

RE: Close, but no cigar...

Landscape

Isn't there a 3rd party app to do that by this point? Between the NX/NZ lines, the UXes and now these, I should think someone would have put that out for Sony and maybe for others...

For that matter, a 3rd party app to customize toolbars (add functions, hide any that aren't used, etc.) would be fantastic... I'd love to have a mini-battery icon on the toolbar of my T3 and not have to tap the time to see it, and have it not change color in some apps...

RE: New Datebook

"I'm getting tired of opening and closing my T3 to see the whole screen"

You don't HAVE to close it everytime, but on the same token, you can usually see all you need while in the compact mode. The "T" is for transformable... it can be big or small depending on your tastes.

It does sound like the TH55 would be more in line with your preferences though.

RE: New Datebook

RE: New Datebook

Hey Mike, just a thought here. I've had a couple of PDA's that provided the functionality I wanted but I didn't like it's appearance. The HE330 was one of them (although it's appearance did grow on me over time). IMHO, a good solution/compromise is to buy a nice case. I like flip-up lids, so I generally get one from E&B or Vaja, depending on how much money I have at a given time. Both cases have turned out to be elegant solutions.

I know you're in love with this Sonly, though. I was just offering a suggestion if you just happen to not like it once you get your hands on it. =)

Hmm...that reminds me, I wonder how the case makers will adapt to this thing, given the funky position of the front buttons and back jog dial?

_________________Sean

Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.

Like an evolved Z-71

Looks sweet. When I broke the screen on my Z-71 I replaced it with a T3. Love the ripping-fast CPU, but not the slider or the battery life. This looks like a good compromise, even though it has the dubious distinction of using the slowest OS5 CPU to date. I just bought an m500 for a backup and realized how very painful it is to go back to a slower unit. Still, I would have bought this if it were available. Kudos to Sony for such a well-balanced product.

european version rocks - us version sucks

The european version (WLAN + Bluetooth) will be the version everyone will go for and in no time there will be grey market imports.

I don´t understand Sony why they excluded BT from the US version. Adding a BT chip costs nothing and they had to do the R&D for the european version anyway. The target group for this PDA are people who for sure have or will buy Mobile Phones with BT. The target group is the same for the US and Europe.

I think Sony hit a homerun with the Clie TH55 and it´s new PIMs. The only things I would like to change are:- SD cards instead of the memory stick- exchangeable batteries

RE: european version rocks - us version sucks

RE: european version rocks - us version sucks

The largest two mobile carriers in the US (Verizon and Sprint) still do not support BlueTooth. I am not really sure what the holdup is. My sales VZON rep keeps hinting of rumors of a BT GSM phone, but it's been over a year since he's been telling me that, and I don't know what VZON is currently doing to improve their GSM network support. I know they are building one, but word is, it's only available in large metro areas. I keep hearing that no CDMA phones support BT, but I tend to think that the two largest carriers in the US could exert at least a little pressure on the manufacturers to change that. That is, unless there's some technical reason CDMA phones don't support BT. (Maybe a conflict in frequencies or something?)

Battery Life is GOOD

Is very very good. If you go to the specs page for the hong kong site the battery times are pretty formidable: 5.5 hours WLAN, 9 days at 30min/day, 17 hours WLAN at Minimum brightness, 6 hours recording, 4 hours MPEG movie playback, 24 hours with display off for music, and 7 hours with maximum brightness for music.

I think those who were complaining about its processor need to stop a this point and weigh playing really processor intensive games for 2 hours vs having a reliable, top of the line 320 x 480 screen palm pilot with very respectable speed and battery life for all the less intense card/board/thought games they'd want to play and still be able to get work done with it before recharging for the night.

RE: Battery Life is GOOD

I run native office apps on my UX-50 using DTG6. It does pretty well. Simple Word docs and Excel spreadsheets open right up. Larger sheets take a moment, but nothing inconvenient. Sure, the T3 I had for a while was faster, but not by as much as you'd think. (Converted docs still run faster.)

I love the handheld engine. It's the same philosophy as a Pentium M chip, or a turbo charger on a car: power only when you need it. I love that I can play MP3's on my UX-50 for hours and hours, where I couldn't on the T3.

RE: Battery Life is GOOD

I'm just curious, does slower mean as slow as a Palm OS 4.x 33mhz/66mhz device?

Cuz a large market of T615/T665 owners will probably be eyeing this having held out from the awful developments in Clie history sense then until now (tiny thumboards, monstrous sizes, mediocre battery life, medicore to awful pricing, small screens on biz oriented PDAs)

This would be me for one...

RE: Battery Life is GOOD

There is a third party program that was put out to fix the problem with the T3 getting hung up after media clips, but they also added a setup where you could set the bus speed and processor speed for each application. I found that by dropping the processor speed down on all the applications that didn't need it, I could easily triple the battery life from my T3. The software was free and it still worked fine after Palm put out the bug fix. I would say that this program should be a must have for T3 owners. I think the name of the program is T3 Optimizer.

Bluetooth really sucked the battery life out of the T3 and it is easier on batteries than WiFi. I really need WiFi for some software I am developing for sale and if a user can only get 1 hr of use out of WiFi or Bluetooth, it is pretty worthless to me. I think that the Sony TH55 looks like exactly what I have been looking for. I do wish it had bluetooth built in. I suspect that this is a marketing ploy. Release a later version in the US with Bluetooth and get all the suckers that have the TH55 to buy the new one. Bluetooth is also much more common in Europe where GSM is the norm. I suspect that Sony's marketing people decided that leaving Bluetooth out of the Euro version would inhibit sales. Unfortunately, this is how the decisions are made on these type of things in the bored rooms of corporations.

This is my first post here so I would like to also just say hello to everyone. I hope that this forum will help educate me and that I can give something back. I am pretty new to the PDA scene. I got my first on about a year and a half ago. Since then I have been working on how to produce and supply custom programs to industry for use on factory floors. I own a business that works with instrumentation and controls and I see this is a natural evolution for my company.I want to put real time info into manufacturing production managers pockets. I can think ofmany possible applications. On that note, I would welcome feedback and suggestions if anyone wants. Hopefully that statement did not violate the TOS for this message board. This was not meant to be spam and I hope no one sees it as such.

HK always have early access to Sony products

It's just Hong Kong always have earlier access to new Sony models. For PalmOne's handhands, HK is much slower in getting new models. The Treo 600 has not even been announced in HK, while the T3 model is two months later than the US market.

I still do not quite understand why bluetooth is left out in such a good product. Maybe Sony will soon release a bluetooth model very soon.

I think those Sony products have higher qualities (in terms of productions) than the recent PalmOne's PDAs, which suffer a bit in production quality of controls.

These newer Sony PDAs have longer battery lifes than many other equivalent models. I suppose it's the benefits of the Sony CPUs? I am glad that they finally brought back the almost forgotten good points of longer battery life in Palm devices.

--With great power comes great responsiblity.

RE: HK always have early access to Sony products

Well a clear benefit in terms of battery life - ye. But the evidence suggests that it is significantly slower. i like the idea of Sony's 'Handheld Engine' (thats what sony calls it) - which ramps the speed (mhz) depneding on the needs of the program that it is running. But there have been some developer issues about not being able to get it to go to the full 123 mhz when it should.

Also - great idea but how about having it ramp to 300 or 400 mhz? the battery savings would not be as good as this because it would obviously be capable of going to higher speeds - but would still be an improvement over existing 300/400 mhz devices.

RE: HK always have early access to Sony products

sony handheld engine is actually made of 3 CPUs, one is ARM929, then there is DSP for audio playback (therefore those 25hours of mp3s) & polyphonic sounds and last but not least is 2D/3D graphics chip which allows not only mpeg4/mpeg at 30fps almost 5 hours but supports openGL.

Available on 20/2/04!

I had a chance to play around the TH55 today in HK Sony Pro Shop, the staff told me that it will be availabe earliest on 20/2/04. The TH55 is significantly lighter than my TG50, screen size is comparable to NZ series. The plastic cover seems undetachable and very easy to leave your finger print on :(. Another problem is you CANNOT switch the Netfront software from Protriat mode to Landscape mode.

Is it just me?

"Or use Wireless LAN to do the same with Wireless LAN-equipped PDAs installed with Palm OS." This sentence is saying that I can connect 2 palm's without the need of a wlan acces point? I am not sure because that will mean that this is the bluetooth replacement.

wtf..

was sony smoking? The button layout on the th55 SUCKS. four app buttons on the bottom EDGE? The scroll wheel is on the BACK of the unit at the top? wtf?

Sony once again screws up what could have been a decent unit.

I'm probably going to get flamed badly, but its true. I admit it's good that someone finally created a tablet style palm with a hvga screen. But c'mon. Unless you just play games that use the screen or dont play them at all, this unit sucks.

RE: wtf..

Perhaps you would do better to read above. The Battery Life is formidable. The best I've seen on Any PDA, Palm or PPC... 24 hours of MP3 playback is simply shocking, as is 17 hours of WLAN with Backlight at minimum

The button layout isn't stupid. Dont comment on something without having used it first.

RE: wtf..

the button placement isn't as bad as you might think--if you hold your current rectangular palmpilot such that three fingers are on one side and your thumb is on the other, you'll notice your pointer ends up right where those buttons will be. Certainly not good for fast action games but adequate I think for casual use.

RE: wtf..

I'm quite sure those of you who are slamming the button layout haven't even tried feeling how it would be on your current Palm. Hold it and see where your Index finger goes. The main reason the jogdial was there was because lefties were complaining that placing the jog in a place where right handers would find it easier to use was unfair...

RE: wtf..

I had tried to use the TH55 in HK, the jogdial on back is quite difficult to use, but it might be good for those left hand dominant when compare with the old design.I can't hold the Clie firmly on my hand when I use the index finger to control the jogdial, and the left/right button. The feeling is v. unsecure and the Clie might fall (partly bcoz the Clie is too light)Another problem is, I cannot use the jogdial without taking it out from the case anymore.

obvious

It's pretty obvious that if you want to make small handheld with a large display, there's no room for large buttons on the front.

PalmOne chose to put bigger buttons on a slider covering part of the display. Sony chose to use tiny buttons and/or put some of them on the side or back or flip out keyboard. Tapwave chose to not make their handheld as small and pocketable as either. And PPC models only have half the display size in pixels.

RE: wtf..

the four buttons at the bottom are a great choice - you can select an application while the clear cover is on. this would allow switching from say your day view, to your todo list without flipping the cover.

in addition, the scrollbar on the back might be nice if you keep it in your front pocket and listen to music, you can use it to scroll/play songs easily.

bottom line---we can't judge the positions until we've played with it.

we all said "clie" and "tungsten" were stupid names years back, now they're common terms...

That Clie font...

I've been very anxiously awaiting a PalmOS PDA with a 320 x 480 display in a tablet form. I'm excited that there's one already announced (the Clie) with another rumored to be on the way (the TE2).

One thing that really bothers me about the Clie is the font that Sony uses. I've had a Clie N760C, and it always bothered me that the normal font is so big, most of the names in the address book list get truncated. Looking at the SonyStyle website for the new Clie, the font looks exactly the same. The Palm system font, in comparison, allows a lot more information to be displayed on the screen at one time.

Can anyone with a newer Clie model comment on this?

RE: That Clie font...

Actually, in the NX80v, Sony has a utility under the menu that allows you to adjust the font of address book entries, memo pad, datebook, etc. The address book can now fit something like 26 entries in one screen.

If the thin font bothers you, there's also the option to get Fonts4NX or the like, which allows you to choose from a list of fonts to use globally.

RE: That Clie font...

>>What's this? Is this any different than choosing font sizes in "regular" PalmOS? I've never seen anything different. (And have you posted to the Dr. abosco thread yet?)

Yes, this is different than the traditional Palm OS. There are actually six different sizes to choose from, ranging from 26 address book entries in one screen to 12 entries in one screen, and everything in between.

-BoscoNX80v + Wifi + BT + T616

RE: That Clie font...

Wait a minute. You mean the fonts that come up when in Memo Pad->Options->Font.

The newest CLIEs have 6 font sizes. Six fonts are available to all PalmOS licensees. palmOne chose not to use the two smallest fonts because they are basically unreadable, even on that higher-res screen.

However, they are *great* for seeing a full paragraph and being able to select all of it w/o dragging.

gaming

thats the main thing, is that even for normal use the buttons are fine, for gaming your screwed. the game controller is a good idea, but then thats one more thing that you have to carry around and its a hassle to pull that thing out just to play a game. a lot of games are more stylis oriented so its ok, but with games like doom coming out for it, its a shame. but tablet form was my dream, with bluetooth. the main reason is for phone numbers. its a great palm and I could do without the camera. save on some weight and bulk. the clie organizer looks pretty cool in my opinion, some interesting ideas on sony's part. the hard case is awesome. everone remember the useless flip covers from the t-series.

-stupid corporations

Closest thing yet to the paper organiser metaphor...

The TH55 is, for me, a mind-blowing device, and bodes well for Sony's organiser line for Palm OS 6.

Now, I'm no fan of Sony's. My preference is for the PalmOne devices any day of the week, but this machine sways me severely. If I were in the market for a new PDA now, I'd be biting my nails waiting for the first one to hit the States.

For me, the most important aspect of my PDA is that it helps me to organise myself. And for that, I use one button and Datebk5. That application, to me, is the best integration of the four core organisation applications on the Palm OS platform - Datebook, Address Book, To-Do List and NotePad.

(This is not to start a flame war about the merits of 3rd party PIMS, so please don't miss my point here.)

Sony has created in the TH55 more than just a piece of hardware, but an organisation system that's head and shoulders above _anything_ on the market today. And that is simply because it's the most complete metaphor of the way people try to organise themselves on paper, and it uses technology to improve that method.

Like a paper planner, you can stick anything into your datebook. Dates, stickies, scribbles, links, and to-do items can all be incorporated. That pictures taken with the built-in camera can be stuck into the datebook is a big thing. Whiteboard sessions, quick construction site pics, fender-bender photos, that bolt that needs changing on the back porch all factor in here.

Multi-step to-do's in the same application space are a nice touch, and negates the need for third-party software (and another hardware button, by the way...)

For the ultimate in address books, this puppy allows me to capture photos of all my contacts, not a necessary thing, but a nice touch, and again, still in the Clie Organizer application, and without the need for another hardware button.

On top of all that, you still have a notepad that't just about the size of a 99 cent spiral-bound pad of paper.

That's 2-1/2 to 3MB that can better be used for data, or for the one thing that this device is missing - MS Office compatibility with DocsToGo.

The TH55 bodes well for Sony too, and I wait with bated breath for their OS6 offerings. If Clie Organizer is any portent of things to come, Sony will release a device that will blow the tablet PC market out of the water.

And a note to the gamers. Out-of-box, this baby ain't for you guys. Tapwave has taken care of you. This is more likely the new face of the general organiser. Mike Cane, in a earlier post referred to it as the "Ultimate Clie". I beg to differ a little bit. It could very well be the closest we've come to date to the ultimate out-of-box Personal Digital Assistant.

I'll admit to not understanding at first the scroll wheel and left and right buttons being on the back of the unit, and I'll wait until I hold a TH55 before I pass final judgement. But holding my expanded T|T and mocking the motions, I can see why they're there and how useful they might really be.

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